Any move towards withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) would risk damaging the UK’s trading position, a former president of the human rights court argued this week.

Robert Spano, now an international business lawyer, was speaking to me on Tuesday evening at a public event sponsored by the law firm Gibson Dunn, where he is a partner.

Hours later, the Telegraph reported a claim by the former defence secretary Ben Wallace that the ECHR had become a threat to national security. His argument seems unconvincing, I say at the start of my column for this week’s Law Society Gazette. But most of the piece is devoted to reporting and analysing Spano’s comments.

The event on Tuesday was entertainingly introduced by Lord Falconer of Thornton, the former Labour lord chancellor who is also a partner at Gibson Dunn. He asked the first question.

I sent a recording of the interview to my paying subscribers on Wednesday morning, together with a summary of Spano’s comments. The recording is now available to all as a podcast, which you can download from this page and listen to in the normal way.

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